Having a near-monopoly on making action-based video games for the world’s most popular sport is always going to come with high expectations and a lot of pressure, but it’s fair to say that even with that allowance, the response to EA FC 26 indicates a game that failed to hit the mark on fans’ expectations. While the series has often had more games that are received tepidly than not, with the occasional leap forward arriving two or three times a decade, last year’s release created a lot of ill will.
As EA FC 27 heads into its final months of development, here is what EA should be looking to do to win back public opinion.
Five Things to Fix With EA FC 27
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While it wasn’t a game without any redeeming qualities in our review, overall, players still had a lot of problems with the game they were served. These five key areas of improvement would go a long way toward turning the ship around this year:
Deliver Consistent Performance
Before getting into the design choices that went wrong, the game was released with far too many bugs and inconsistent performance. Even the best games in the world can’t be enjoyed like they deserve if they only operate how they’re supposed to some of the time. Releasing a game that solves these problems is a must to give EA FC 27 the best chance of winning back public sentiment.
Dial Back The Competitive Pacing
One of the big innovations in EA FC 26 was the introduction of dual modes: competitive and authentic. The idea of a faster mode for online competitive play was a good one; gamers did not love the balance that was struck. Online games were comically high-scoring, and gamers criticized how simple, route-one tactics dominated. Refining the competitive mode to be exciting without being an uninhibited track race is a must.
Make It Fun To Play Without Constantly Opening Your Wallet
We are long past the point of being surprised that developers view their online modes as money-printing machines, and the reality is that those are now the primary revenue generators funding the games. The option to spend is never going to go away, but that doesn’t mean fans can’t still ask for an experience where spending lets you enhance your experience with the game, not one where it is the baseline minimum for anyone hoping to be competitive.
Remember That Offline Players Exist
Speaking of free and fun ways to play, the continued neglect of players who don’t enjoy Ultimate Team modes in sports games remains a widespread problem in the industry. A game that took time to reinvest development resources into offline modes would go over extremely well with players who prefer solo play.
Career modes, both for individual players and in a full-team management capacity, used to be the engine that drove sports games. Gamers would play season after season, and use the experience there to batter their friends in couch co-op. Releasing an EA FC that shows clear care and effort put into refreshing the offline modes and making them more engaging and fun would be a delightful development.
Give Us Something New
Taking big risks is not the standard in sports franchises, with developers knowing that, for all the griping and moaning, the vast majority of their audience will ultimately still throw down their cash to get the new year’s release when it launches. When EA has taken big swings with its games, however, be it deciding to release a World Cup game with full qualifying in the 90s or the many risks taken with FIFA 17, they’ve shown they do have the ability to come up with things that nobody was asking for but which, in the end, they certainly wanted. If the best minds of football gaming development have something new up their sleeve, it might be just what the franchise needs.
These are our proposed fixes to what has plagued the last year of EA FC, but there were other complaints to go around. What do you want to see in EA FC 27 if it’s going to be viewed as a success?
Published: Jun 2, 2026 10:00 am